Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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A Long Residence In The Salt-Producing Districts Of Europe,
And The Labours Of Practical Halurgy, To Which I Have Been Devoted
Since My Early Youth, Suggested To Me The Idea Of Those Constructions,
Which Have Been Imitated With Some Success.
Cuvercles of wood, placed
on clarificadoras, accelerated the evaporation, and led me to believe
that a system of cuvercles and moveable frames, furnished with
counter-weights, might extend to other cauldrons.
This object merits
further examination; but the quantity of vezou (guarapo) of the
crystallized sugar extracted, and that which is destroyed, the fuel,
the time and the pecuniary expense, must be carefully estimated.
An error, very general through Europe and one which influences opinion
respecting the effects of the abolition of the slave-trade, is that in
those West India islands called sugar colonies, the majority of the
slaves are supposed to be employed in the production of sugar. The
cultivation of the sugar-cane is no doubt a powerful incentive to the
activity of the slave trade; but a very simple calculation suffices to
prove that the total mass of slaves contained in the West Indies is
nearly three times greater than the number employed in the production
of sugar. I showed seven years ago that, if the 200,000 cases of sugar
exported from the island of Cuba in 1812 were produced in the great
establishments, less than 30,000 slaves would have sufficed for that
kind of labour. It ought to be borne in mind for the interests of
humanity that the evils of slavery weigh on a much greater number of
individuals than agricultural labours require, even admitting, which I
am very far from doing, that sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton can be
cultivated only by slaves.
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